EDITORIAL PARDON YOUR TURKEY FORGET THE BIRDS, SPARE US!

IT'S an American tradition dating back to President Harry Truman - and it's for the birds.

We write, of course, of the annual presidential pardon of the nation's top turkey, or turkeys, as was the case this year, when President George W. Bush spared the life of ``Marshmallow'' and ``Yam,'' which were brought in from Minnesota for the occasion.

Like all things American, this ritual keeps getting bigger and more elaborate. This year, it wasn't enough that Bush merely pardoned the birds, with the promise of retiring them to some quiet farm, as in the past. No, this year's feted fowl, like Super Bowl MVPs, then went to Disneyland.

First class.

And they're heading up the park's Thanksgiving Day Parade as honorary grand marshals.

We hate to sound like Ebenezer Scrooge turning up a month early, but doesn't all this sound a little bit, well, bird-brained?

The idea behind ``pardoning'' the turkeys, after all, is to spare them from a miserable fate, but poor Marshmallow and Yam seem to be giving up one form of gobbler grief for another.

Being made White House props, dragged around the country, stuck in an airplane, turned into a spectacles at Disneyland. It's hard not to think that they wouldn't have been better off with a quick and painless trip to turkey heaven, like so many of their counterparts who will grace our dinner tables this evening.

But maybe this is just one more thing to be grateful for: The gift of living in a country so unabashedly goofy, where even turkeys become celebrities, and where marshmallows and yams aren't just side dishes.